Now They Tell Us: Papers Say Adolfo Carrion Not Such a Great Beep

March 2, 2009

Now that Adolfo Carrion is leaving the Bronx borough presidency for the Obama Administration, local papers are telling us the bad news about him. The Daily News — which sat on a Carrion expose last December — tells us that “just before or after he sponsored money for projects or approved important zoning changes,” Carrion got large donations from interested parties. For instance: Boricua College gave him $8,000 and three weeks later asked for clearance to build a new tower, which Carrion granted. The News has five other stories like this. The Times details such Carrion failures as the “Bronx at Work” program (Bronx’s unemployment rate is 9.6 percent) and, of course, the Yankee Stadium/Macombs Dam Park mess on which we have extensivelyreported.

Carrion critics wonder what took them so long. The Bronx News Network, which contributed a long, critical Carrion story to the Norwood News on February 19, says “it’s interesting that these two large papers waited to deploy their reporters and run their stories as Adolfo was headed to Washington… I wonder if it were Marty Markowitz of Brooklyn or Helen Marshall of Queens heading to Washington, if the Times and the News would’ve been so late out of the gate…” The Neighborhood Retail Alliance elaborates on Carrion’s role in the Gateway Mall project, and says, “On project after project, AC was a friend, not to the communities or minority businesses… but to those real estate interests whose projects were often antithetical to real community needs.”